Curating

Message to Man (Послание к Человеку) (8·15 - 10·15)

Films from L'Abominable

Films from L'Abominable

October 28, 2015

Word Order (Порядок Слов), Saint Petersburg (Russia)

PROGRAM NOTES

The independent filmmaker's laboratory L'Abominable was created in a Paris suburb in 1996. At this time, a number of similar underground filmmakers' workshops were cropping up all over Europe in order to enable experimentation at the development and printing stages, creative aberrations from standard processes that were unwelcome at traditional laboratories. The founders of L'Abominable, of whom today remains only the de facto leader Nicolas Rey, pursued an ideological goal, as well: the liberation of filmmaking from the constraints of the commercial cinema industry. As the mainstream adopted digital formats, an increasing amount of "obsolete" equipment fell into the hands of members of the growing organization, allowing filmmakers to create analog films with their own hands, from the development stage to the exhibition print. Thanks to the determination and exceptional selflessness of many of its members, L'Abominable gradually emerged from the underground and today, as has remarked the film scholar Nicole Brenez, can compete in productivity with any French production company. In the proposed program, which selectively encompasses the whole period of L'Abominable's activity, one can see textural experimentation with the film medium, attained through various non-standard processes, as well as a renewed interest in reality, a particular documentary gaze that explores the surrounding physical world. Perhaps, this new tendency holds one of the keys explaining the unwavering draw of filmmakers toward the "obsolete" analog format.

Workshop with Victor De Las Heras: Kolomna 16x122

Workshop with Victor De Las Heras: Kolomna 16x122

October 1, 2015 and October 2, 2015

LenDoc Studio and Art of Foto, Saint Petersburg (Russia)

PROGRAM NOTES

This year, "Message to Man" places special emphasis on the technological revolution that has taken place in the cinema industry in the last decade. Among the festival's programs will be offered a unique two-day workshop on shooting and developing black-and-white 16mm film. Using portable analog cameras, participants will create a collective silent documentary project about a vanishing historic Saint Petersburg neighborhood, Kolomna.

"Here nothing is as it is elsewhere in Petersburg; it's neither capital nor countryside ... here it's all peace and retirement," wrote Nikolai Gogol about Kolomna nearly 200 years ago. Against all odds, this unique neighborhood has managed to maintain its singular atmosphere. But, today, Saint Petersburg is developing at such a relentless rate that Gogol's Kolomna may cease to exist in just a few more years.

It might seem that the same fate awaits celluloid. However, there is a fair number of celluloid enthusiasts and independent, collective film laboratories around the world, who see it as their mission to support and extend the life of analog film. The instructor of the workshop, Parisian filmmaker Victor De Las Heras, is a member of two such collectives: L'Abominable and L'Etna.

This project has been organized in partnership with the curator Mariya Nikiforova and with the support of the open film studio LenDoc and the artisan photo laboratory Art of Foto.

Brûle la mer

Brûle la mer

March 5, 2015

Brattle Theatre, Cambridge

PROGRAM NOTES

Through a collaboration with the Emerson College collective Film Organics, we are very proud to present a brand new 35mm copy of Brûle la mer (Burn the Sea), made by Nathalie Nambot and Maki Berchache in 2014 and partially completed at the independent filmmakers' collective and laboratory L'Abominable. A very special thanks to MoMA and the filmmakers for this fortuitous opportunity!

Brûle la mer stands at the paradoxical crossroads between the lively energy of a revolution in progress (Tunisia), the momentum of a departure to Europe, and the violence of a welcome declined. The film targets what constitutes the sensitive framework of an existence at a time of rupture; that which is the smallest, the most common, far from exoticism, but haunted by a dream, like an exhortation. It is not a film about emigration or revolution, it is an essay on freedom, or rather an essay that stages freedom: a real and fictitious attempt to escape which involves the making of a film, taking part in the process of emancipation: burning the sea, borders, laws, papers, etc. What does it mean to break with one’s past life, leave one’s country and family in which, somehow or other, strong links of solidarity, mutual assistance and ancestral ties to the land still prevail, and join a world mythologized and dominated by capitalist relationships? What is meant by ’living one’s life’?

Recent Works from Collectif Jeune Cinéma

Recent Works from Collectif Jeune Cinéma

November 23, 2014

Carpenter Center Room B04, Cambridge, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

A special co-presentation with Collectif Jeune Cinéma and programmer Filipe Afonso. Located in Montreuil (the historic site of Lumière brothers' and Méliès's workshops!), this filmmaker-friendly organization has distributed and projected experimental works since 1971. It also organizes a yearly festival, whose most recent edition has just rocked a converted meat locker in the 13th arrondissement. The presented program includes contemporary European works, several of which have been produced by hand at the independent film labs L'Etna and L'Abominable.

Co-curated by Filipe Afonso (appearing in person) and Mariya Nikiforova. We are grateful to the French Consulate in New York and the Harvard Film Archive for assistance with this screening.

PROGRAM

K (Exil) / Frédérique Devaux

2008 - 16mm - 9 min
Two-thirds of K (Exil) consists of images of the women and children who remain at home, alone, while the men leave for a life of exile. These images, always fragmentary (either cut-up or inserted piece by piece within the image as a whole), alternating between negative and positive, complementing or contradicting each other - give an insight into the wrenching separation experienced by those members of the population who remain at home, left to their fate in an inhospitable landscape.
Over what we call the 'joints', we will engrave words in French or Kabyle (Berber), echoing the masculine voices of Rachid Adel and Michel Amarger. An original composition by Mr. Djamel Tareb will form the musical sound-track for the film.

BIO: Born in October 1956 in Paris, Frédérique Devaux is a professor of art and cinema at the University of Paris and the Louis Lumière school. Author of numerous works on art and film, in particular Dziga Vertov’s Man With a Movie Camera, The Letterist Cinema, Interviews with Isidore Isou and many articles, she is currently preparing a book on the relationship between cinema and the arts. She has published magazines and co-produced several films by Isidore Isou. From 1982 to 1986 she co­founded and co-organized the International Avant­Garde Festival of Photography, Film and Video (FIAG) in Paris. She has made three dozen experimental films and documentaries since 1980.

Folia / Victor de las Heras and Anaïs Ibert

2013 - 16mm - 10 min
Folia is a solo piece for contrabass written by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho in 1995. This film is a personal vision of the work as interpreted by a bass player and two filmmakers.

Square Dance / Silvia das Fadas

2013 - 16mm - 10 min
"The people are what is not there yet, never in the right place, never ascribable to the place and time where anxieties and dreams await." (Jacques Rancière) One day while carrying Russell Lee’s photographs (from the Farm Security Administration Series) under my arm, someone asked me about the film, the film he assumed the images belonged to. I had to reply that there was no film, the images weren’t mine. But this question became an obsession, a ritornello. What film could be enclosed in those photographs? What was the context, the portion of the real there? Who were these people? Who was hosting the party? To what music were they dancing? Romantic songs, political songs? What were the relationships between the couples? How did the young man tear his shirt? What provoked the tension? And the expectation in their expressions?... And why did they arouse in me such an emotional response, such a strong wish for a narrative, even a fragmentary one?

BIO: Sílvia das Fadas is an experimental filmmaker, an independent researcher of Cinema Studies, a projectionist and cinephile. Born in Portugal in 1983, she studied cinema and aesthetics, committing herself to the material learning of film at ANIM (The Portuguese Moving Image Archive) and the Portuguese Cinematheque in Lisbon. Driven by a militant nostalgia, she moved to Los Angeles where she continues to craft her personal films in 16mm, at the California Institute of the Arts. Among her films are Romance Noir (2008), Imorredoira (2008), The Book of Natural Magic (2011), Apanhar Laranjas /Picking Oranges (2012) and Square Dance, Los Angeles County, California, 2013 (2013).

2014 - 16mm - 12 min
Medellin. Tireless car traffic. In the margins of a society launched at top speed, some lurking engines shutdown to make a living ; Jugglers at intersections, employees on breaks, whose precise and repetitive work mark the flow of time which is always repeated.

BIO: Born in Medellin (Colombia) in 1975, Camilo Restrepo lives and works in Paris since 1999. Graduate from the Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux­arts de Paris. Member of l’Abominable, film laboratory based on the artistic use of analog film.

2013 - video - 11 min
The tree of life, an almost monochromatic cycle where the dominant is not an absolute rule. Here is a tree in the forest. It is from it that life arises full of wisdom. The awakening of a simple presence for the story of a life. From one green to another, an entire cycle awaits us.

BIO: Born in 1974 in Grenoble, Jacques Perconte lives and works in Paris after having spent many years in south­west. Jacques Perconte explores the body, the landscape and the color through the digital supports. Every work naturally finds its expression in an adequate medium: video, photography, interactive creation, writing or music, installations...

Rearrangement of Frames and Memories

Rearrangement of Frames and Memories

October 27, 2014

Paramount Center, Boston, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

Balagan presents a program of rarely seen Japanese experimental cinema from the past several decades, guest curated by filmmaker Tomonari Nishikawa. The program focuses on short works that display unique visual effects. Some express a boundary between reality and illusion, while others simply express the artists’ interests in image manipulation and exploring the limits of the medium. The films will be presented in their original formats, with the majority of the prints coming directly from Japan.

About the curator:

Tomonari Nishikawa is filmmaker and installation artist working in the mediums of 35mm, 16mm, and Super-8 film. His works have screened at numerous festivals worldwide including the Toronto International Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, and the Berlinale. As a curator, he has programmed for the Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions in Tokyo. He currently lives and teaches in upstate New York at Colgate University.

This event has been made possible by the generous support of the Japan Foundation, the Graduate Student Association of Emerson College, and Colgate University.

PROGRAM

Pulse / Keiichi Minegishi

1982, 6 min, 16mm
Pulse shows a study of apparent motion with a pre-­‐cinema technique, phenakistoscope, using a record player and a stroboscopic light. Keiichi Minegishi studied at Image Forum Institute of Moving Image and is a member of Animation 80, a screening organization founded in Tokyo in 1980.

Cessna / Takashi Nakajima

1974, 20 min, 16mm
Cessna consists of a series of short takes, alternating the visual pace through the movements of subjects and camera, which reveals Nakajima's studio space and later the process of making the film. Takashi Nakajima is a former director of Image Forum, which he co‐founded with Nobuhiro Kawanaka and Katsue Toyama.

Film Display / Shunzo Seo

1979, 5 min, 16mm
Film Display is composed of three parts, each of which focuses on motion on the screen and filmstrips. Shunzo Seo made a body of work on 16mm in the 70s and 80s, and Film Display has been screened internationally.

Wiper / Itaru Kato

1985, 7 min, 16mm
Wiper manipulates the image and time of an ordinary scene, transforming it into something bizarre. Itaru Kato studied at Image Forum Institute of Moving Image, and he currently teaches at Tohoku University of Art and Design.

Tokio House / Sumiaki Ishida

1990, 7 min, 16mm
Tokio House suggests a story of a house, or a haunted memory of a girl who used to live in the house before it was destroyed. Sumiaki Ishida was a member of Animation 80 and made animation for Abraham Ravett’s film, Horse/Kappa/House.

Land / Moe Suzuki

2011, 8 min, video
Land depicts a journey through memory and imagination, moving in and out of repetitive patterns. Moe Suziki is a recent graduate from Tama Art University, and Land was screened as part of the Young Perspective program at Image Forum in 2011.

Space is the Place / Eriko Sonoda

2011, 6 min, video
Space is the Place is a study in shapes and motion in 2D and 3D spaces, comprised of three sections. Eriko Sonoda studied at Tama Art University, and her films and video works have been shown at major film festivals, including Toronto International Film Festival.

Rocking Chair / Shiho Kano

2000, 13 min, 16mm
Rocking Chair portrays a private time and the surroundings, expressing emptiness, tension and pressure through subtle gestures and movement. Shiho Kano makes film, video, and installation works, and her films have won prizes at Images Festival in Toronto and Media City Film Festival, among others.

Shishosetsu / Nobuhiro Kawanaka

1987, 8 min, 16mm
Shishosetsu (autobiographical novel) shows a glimpse of a life, with subjects often found in an home movies, through a lyrical movement created by images rephotographed on an editing viewer. Nobuhiro Kawanaka co‐founded Underground Center, an organization that later became Image Forum in 1977.

Outré Montréal

Outré Montréal

September 18, 2014

Paramount Center, Boston, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

Montreal continues to be a source of innovative experimental cinema that is rooted in hands-on, formally adventurous production -- thanks, in part, to the exuberant activities of the Double Negative filmmakers' collective. Co-presented with Bright Lights (Emerson), this program highlights a number of works from Double Negative members and their friends completed in the last several years.

Filmmakers and DN members Daïchi Saïto and Eduardo Menz will discuss the films with the audience in a post-screening Q&A.

Made possible with support from the Québec Government Office in Boston and Emerson College.

PROGRAM

Mamori / Karl Lemieux

35mm / black and white / Dolby SR / 8 min. / 2010 / Canada
Projection Format: 35mm (1.37:1)
At the invitation of Spanish composer Francisco Lopez, Lemieux took part in a creative residency at Lopez’s Mamori ArtLab, where sound artists compose from field recordings. Lemieux tried to capture the textures of tropical vegetation and its various transformations according to the phenomena of light.

Cronograma de un tiempo inexistente / Malena Szlam

35mm, HD / color / silent / 6 min. / 2008 / Canada
Projection Format: QuickTime Prores 422
A photomontage composed of 35mm still photos, Chronogram of Inexistent Time is a journey to restore sight, reflecting on the role our memory can play in the reconstitution of what is visible and invisible.

16mm / color / optical mono / 9 min. / 2011 / Canada
Projection Format: 16mm
A simple walk in the park can become a spiritual experience, a moment of discovery, a pilgrimage. This film explores the meditative nighttime allure of the Park Lafontaine, Montreal, turning this public space into an abstract form of sanctuary.

DV / color / sound / 12 min. / 2005 / Canada
Projection Format: QuickTime Prores 422
Through the repetition and alteration of image, sound and text that play on viewer’s expectations, Pinochet’s Women examines class structure, the meaning of beauty and forgotten history through two very different but significant women during Pinochet's brutal regime of the late 1980s in Chile.

Shadowplay: Summer Fundraiser Screening

Shadowplay: Summer Fundraiser Screening

July 31, 2014

Norman B. Leventhal Park, Boston, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

After some months of rest and recuperation, Balagan again travels to the strange quiet of the Financial District. This time, we present a screening of short works selected from an open call, featuring filmmakers from Boston, the greater US and Canada. The resulting program, taking place during midsummer twilight in Norman B. Leventhal park, is a crepuscular journey through hypnagogic wormholes.

The event's goal is fundraising for future Balagan programs, and the represented filmmakers have generously donated the rentals of their films for our cause. Many thanks to all those who offered us their work that we were unable to include in this program.

Admission is free and open to everyone, but we ask that you please consider making a donation at the event -- or online via our Support page -- Balagan relies on the help of the community to continue programming such as this.

PROGRAM

Balinese Rebar / Stephen Broomer

Toronto / 2012 / 16mm / 3.5 min
Birds in flight break through rusted clouds and translucent buildings. Rebar at a construction site seems to snake through sunlit puddles. / Stephen Broomer is a filmmaker and film historian. His restorations of Canadian student films of the 1960s have screened at the Canadian Film Institute, the Pleasure Dome, and Cinematheque Ontario, and his writings on cinema have appeared in Visual Anthropology Review, Film International, and CineAction.

Shades of Grey / Robert Todd

Boston / 2014 / 16mm to video / 7 min
Spaces between black and white: Obscurities, Vagueries, Ephemera, Flotsam and other inconsistencies drifting distantly through the haze of film. / Robert Todd is a Boston-based filmmaker, known primarily for his short poetic experimental films. He teaches film production at Emerson College. His films have screened at international film festivals including The Rotterdam International Film Festival, The New York Film Festival, The Ann Arbor Film Festival, Media City Festival, and others.

The Soul of Things / Dominic Angerame

San Francisco / 2010 / 16mm / 15 min
"Nothing is apparent to ordinary vision until it is painted upon the window of the soul." (William Denton, 1866) William Denton is one of the early pioneers exploring the art and science of psychometry. Psychometrics believes that every object emits a field of energy. That energy can transit its entire history through touch. That is every brick contains the history of what happened inside its walls and outside its walls and at the same time its own history of creation. / Dominic Angerame is an American experimental filmmaker, who has directed more than 35 films since 1969, and has presented films in film festivals worldwide. He served as director of Canyon Cinema for over thirty years.

Oracle / Douglas Urbank

Boston / 2014 / 16mm / 7.5 min
Douglas Urbank, based in Boston, Massachusetts, is an experimental filmmaker with a background in sculpture and drawing who began working with film in 2008. His films are made primarily with 16 mm film stock using “direct film” techniques, including combinations of original and found footage, blank leader, hand coloring, adhesive overlays, and other interventions, and are edited on a light table without use of a traditional editing system.

Sleep of Ondine / Mark Cetilia

Providence / 2013 / 16mm to video / 12.5 min
Inspired by the myth of Ondine, who cursed her unfaithful lover to stop breathing should he ever fall asleep, Sleep of Ondine compresses the brainwave frequencies of a typical night's sleep into a 30 second sequence. Shot on 16mm film with hand-painted transparencies, custom lenses and electronically-controlled stroboscopic light at 16, 24, 32, 48 and 64 frames per second and painstakingly captured frame-by-frame, then passed into an audiovisual feedback loop where the visual material controls parameters of an analog modular synthesizer, is manipulated in custom software written in SuperCollider, and the resulting audio analyzed to control playback and manipulation of the video, Sleep of Ondine is caught in a constant struggle for wakefulness and final submission to a state of rest. / Mark Cetilia is a media artist whose work employs generative systems in art, design, and sound creation; it is an exercise in carefully controlled chaos.

Rattle / Rene Dongo

Boston / 2014 / video / 2.5 min
Overlapping memories. / Utilizing time and space as his canvas, Rene explores socially conscious issues from a youthful perspective. As a Boston-Peruvian videomaker he strives to better understand community issues while exploring new visual languages through digital video.

Message to Humanity / Ernesto Livon-Grossman

Boston / 2009 / video / 5 min
An abstract phonetic poetry performance by Roberto Cignoni extended by found footage. / Ernesto Livon-Grosman was born and raised in Buenos Aires. In his early twenties, he moved to Patagonia, where he developed an interest in the history and the politics of that region. He later published Geografias imaginarias, a study about travel writers who created a mythical iconography of the Patagonian landscape, one in which the region is viewed as an uninhabited space despite the indigenous groups that have been living in the area for centuries. During the last military dictatorship, Livon-Grosman emigrated to Costa Rica. He went back to Argentina in 1983 after the return of the democratic government. He now lives in the Boston area where he teaches literature and film at Boston College.

Battle Hymn of the Republic / LJ Frezza

NY / 2013 / video / 5 min
A series of prayer scenes from Hollywood films produced about and/or during World War II. A consideration of ideological and technological othering. / LJ Frezza creates video works of heavily edited found-footage and curates film programs for the Basement Media Festival and Spectacle Theater.

Renai no Daikyouen / Haruka Mitani and Michael Lyons

2014 / Super-8 to video / 6.5 min
Created by Haruka Mitani & Michael Lyons, 2012-2014, to celebrate the Norman McLaren Centennial. The soundtrack is created optically using light sensors on the projection screen. / Haruka Mitani is an independent filmmaker based in Kyoto Japan. She was raised in a traditional Kyoto lacquer-ware crafts family and received a university degree in Image Arts and Sciences from Ritsumeikan University. Michael Lyons is a media arts and sciences researcher and educator based in Kyoto, Japan. He regularly contributes to conferences such as SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH ASIA. He co-founded the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, a leading music technology research event held annually. He is currently a Professor of Image Arts and Sciences at Ritsumeikan University.

Triptych 1, Acadia National Park / Ben Pender-Cudlip

Boston / video / 3 min
An exploration of sunlight and shadow in the Maine woods. / Ben directs nonfiction films that explore our common experiences and feelings as human beings. He is the founder of Unrendered Films. His recent short film Sanjiban premiered at Hot Docs and continues to screen worldwide. Ben graduated from Bard College at Simon’s Rock, and lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

Mountain Lying Down / Lorenzo Gattorna

Baltimore / 2012 / 16mm to video / 3 min
The title signifies the Native American name for the Grand Canyon, a massive gorge in the state of Arizona and one of the seven natural wonders of the world. Turbulence and tranquility gain exposure at enthralling elevations. Strata are uplifted through edges of contrast caused by severe slants of the sun. The scope of the sacred site reaches translation in static brevity, unearthing billions of years of sedimentary rock sequences. / Lorenzo Gattorna is a filmmaker and curator originally from New York now residing in Baltimore. He received a BFA from Tisch School of the Arts at NYU in 2007.

Waldeinsamkeit

Waldeinsamkeit

April 17, 2014

Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

Rebounding from the sylvan charms of A Spell to Ward off the Darkness, we've decided to unveil this melancholy program centered on Waldeinsamkeit, or, woodland solitude. The forest has always sparked the imagination of the lonely traveler, promising encounters with tree-dwelling spirits, ferocious bandits, treacherous plantlife, and feline royalty... During Transcedentalist times, it grew into a benevolent zone of introspection and personal growth. And today, it has gained the status of vestige signifying humanity's lost innocence.

The presented films touch upon some of these ideas in direct or oblique ways, whether through exploring the endlessly compelling shapes of the forest, the evolution of a solitary space across time, or the human's place within. The lineup features a number of new international works that innovatively utilize experimental techniques like pinhole cinematography, screenprinting, layering of multiple exposures, and timelapse; as well as a couple rarely-seen classics.

PROGRAM

En el Movimiento del Paisaje / Lois Patiño

2012, HD video, 10m
"The human figure, immobile, is situated within a landscape that develops facing towards him, surrounding. It is not a static environment, landscape is discovered in their subtle changes: the shadow of smoke on the ground, the mist revealing a mountain, a swirling in the sand ... The man, with his back to us and paralyzed, invites us to contemplate in intimacy and in detail, the processes of change in the natural environment. The camera also stands still, it is the landscape that moves." (LP)

Cinematographie / Philipp Fleischmann

2009, 16mm, 6m
"The Austrian filmmaker Philipp Fleischmann built a circular camera obscura construction in a forest, 360 degrees around, in which the light enters through a small hole and shines on light-sensitive material. Inside the camera, he placed two 16mm filmstrips side by side: one was exposed to the world outside the camera obscura, the other to the world inside the construction. In this manner, it was possible to film both sides of the environment simultaneously. There are no frame breaks, so no frames, but only one image of a forest, so that a phenakistoscopic (spindle viewer) effect is achieved during projection. In Cinematographie, film is no longer a sequence of single frames, but rather a total image that emerges all at once. This continuous, simultaneous projection of reality leads to a cinematic standstill, although the projected image is equal to a tracking shot." - IDFA

Sunhopsoon / Andrej Zdravič

1976, 16mm, 8m
"SUNHOPSOON was the name of a now-defunct vegetable store in New York's Chinatown. The rhythm of the words fit perfectly with my film. SUNHOPSOON originates from having seen, one fine afternoon, light magically flickering on trees and bushes, realizing only later that this dance was being created by a passing freight train. I spent five months waiting and searching along the tracks for it to happen again. Persistence and activity generated the form of the film. The soundtrack is a collage of train rhythms and squeaks, but we never see the train itself." (AZ)

Deep Red / Esther Urlus

2012, 16mm, 7m
"Deep Red is an investigation into additive colour mixing on film. Handmade by a d-i-y silkscreen printing technique. Starting point are on black and white hi-con filmed trees shorn of their leaves. As if they're the reminiscent of branches seen flashing past in the night from the back seat of a car. Transformed into thirty six layer deep technicolour. Supported by Nederlands Film Fonds." (EU)

Kiri (Fog) / Takahiko Iimura

1970, 16mm, 5m
"Shot on 8mm on a mountain in Japan, the abrasive winds that drift the fog in Iimura's Kiri are so fierce we almost believe it to have grazed the filmstrip. The scratches, however, emerge as dust particles that submerge in and out of the mist." (Re-voir)

Wold Shadow / Stan Brakhage

1972, 16mm, 3m
"One day, while walking in the woods, Stan Brakhage had a vision of an unaccountable anthropomorphic shadow amongst the trees. Returning to the place some time later, Brakhage could not find the shadow again. He decided, instead, to compose The Wold Shadow, a cinematic homage to the god of the forest. Brakhage returned to the woods and placed a piece of glass on an easel between the camera and the trees that he planned to film. After composing each shot, Brakhage would take a single photographic frame, paint on the glass and then shoot the glass again, and so on. There being 24 frames in a single second of projected film, it took Brakhage a full day to shoot the shimmering two and a half minute long The Wold Shadow." (Martin Rumsby, Senses of Cinema)

Mountain Home / Robert Schaller

2010, 16mm, 10m
"A vision of the mountains in which I live, both gentle and harsh, domestic and wild, populated and not. Shot on a homemade pinhole camera. Edited initially in 2007, then finished and printed in 2010." (RS)

Aspect / Emily Richardson

2004, 16mm, 9m
"Aspect is filmed in a forest over the period of a year. Using photographic techniques, such as time-lapse and long exposures on single film frames, the forest year is condensed into a few minutes." (ER)
"Across the surface of the forest, light, colour, shadow shift; rhythmic, kaleidoscopic. Matter and the immaterial in constant counteraction. The screen becomes a painting in animation. Ordinarily, light describes the motif. Here, the forest is almost – almost – occluded as the light that delineates the world becomes autonomous, visible; describes itself as subject. There are some very strange effects: light and shadow grow, die back; bark shimmers; branches tremble, or clouds pass above; trees shiver in the cold, or shake in threatening gesture; sunlight flickers, on and off, like an electric bulb. The portrait lives." (Mark Edwards)

Christ Church -- Saint James / Stephen Broomer

2011, 16mm, 10m
"In the spring of 1998, Christ Church - Saint James, an historic black church in Toronto's Little Italy, was destroyed by arson. All that remained were walls and a pit, and over subsequent years, the site was overtaken with graffiti. This film has taken on the layered form of the site itself: the space and its surfaces becoming tangled and multiple, the grid of a stone-filled window giving geometric form to simultaneously occurring images of concrete, nature, waste, paint, and sky." (Light Cone)

Ben Russell + Robert A.A. Lowe

Ben Russell + Robert A.A. Lowe

March 25, 2014

Middlesex Lounge, Cambridge, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

Special partnership with Non-Event and The DocYard! Hot on the heels of their collaboration on A Spell to Ward off the Darkness, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe (Lichens) and Ben Russell will join forces once more to present an evening of improvised vocalizations and musical compositions accompanied by live-manipulated 16mm film projections.

Workshop with Process Reversal: The Mirror

Workshop with Process Reversal: The Mirror

February 22, 2014 and February 23, 2014

Handcranked Productions

PROGRAM NOTES

In this two-day workshop, we will be exploring the anatomy of a film strip through a variety of physical and chemical phenomena that will reshape, destroy and sculpt the film's emulsion. Techniques such as reticulation and bleach etching will all be covered and applied to previously processed strips of film (e.g. found footage), followed by their analysis and interpretation on an optical printer. Additionally, issues concerning both the aesthetic and practical application of these techniques will be addressed through discussions and film screenings, providing participants with a grounds for establishing a sound working method for each process.

Film stock, chemistry and found footage will all be provided for the workshop, but participants may also bring their own footage if they wish (keeping in mind that this is essentially a course on destroying film…) (Process Reversal)

Workshop with Process Reversal: Handmade Emulsion

Workshop with Process Reversal: Handmade Emulsion

February 15, 2014 and February 16, 2014

LaPete Labs

PROGRAM NOTES

The process of handcrafting film emulsion is one that offers to the filmmaker an unprecedented degree of creative intervention and expressiveness that simply cannot be accomplished with commercial film stocks. By making emulsion, the filmmaker is given the ability to manipulate its shape, alter its chemical properties, apply it to non-traditional bases and adjust it in countless additional ways to create a unique photosensitive material. As such, the process manifests new forms of dialogue within the film’s production, many of which are still waiting to be explored.

In this two-day workshop, participants will study the craft of producing black and white, silver gelatin emulsion by formulating, mixing and coating emulsion onto cellulose acetate and various other materials. Theories concerning emulsion chemistry and emulsion production will also be explored in this workshop, providing participants with a foundation to develop their own processes and methodologies. (Process Reversal)

La Cicatrice intérieure (1972) by Philippe Garrel

La Cicatrice intérieure (1972) by Philippe Garrel

October 1, 2013

Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

Ominous and sublime landscapes of Iceland and Sinai, gorgeous soundtrack by Nico, which was later released as the album Desertshore (with the notable exception of "König," which only appears in the film), and the 23-year-old director languishing with his Teutonic muse in amazing linen and leather outfits: such are the makings of this 1972 underground classic. The film was produced in connection with the Zanzibar collective, inspired by the wild spirit of 1968 and financed by a French heiress, Sylvina Boissonnas. Also appearing in the film are the beloved Pierre Clémenti, Nico's son Ari Boulogne-Päffgen, and the artist Daniel Pommereulle. Although the dialogue is occasionally in French and German, the film is not subtitled at the insistence of the director.

Echo-Systems: outdoor music + film

Echo-Systems: outdoor music + film

September 22, 2013

Norman B. Leventhal Park, Post Office Square, Boston

PROGRAM NOTES

A special treat: outdoor screening and performance in the middle of Boston's masonic Financial district, courtesy of the caretakers of the Norman B. Leventhal Park. Acclaimed JP-based filmmaker Robert Todd and Fort Point-based filmmaker Douglas Urbank will present their most recent 16mm works in collaboration with local experimental musicians, Ernst Karel and Jorrit Dijkstra.

Mirror Stage

Mirror Stage

May 13, 2013

Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

Much has been said about what is regarded as the quintessential cinematic experience: the darkened, softened, uterine surroundings, the hypnotic flicker ahead, the lulling whirr from the projection booth. It is a comfortable hiding place from which to observe others' nightmares and desires. As much as we at Balagan embrace this fancy, we like to break the spell on occasion by channeling an earlier form of cinema, when projected images elicited bewilderment instead of reverie.

This time, we aim to shatter cinematic illusions by shifting our attention 180° away from the spectacle. As we ponder the screen, the stage and the curtains; as we gaze into the spectators' faces and observe their body language -- entranced or impatient -- we see a reflection of ourselves. So we enter Lacan's "mirror stage": the anxious moment of catching sight of oneself for the first time and beginning to grasp the reality of one's existence.

PROGRAM

Peter Miller / Projector Obscura

2005, 35mm, 10 minutes
A portrait of seven screens as recorded by their projectors. Projector Obscura is a series of films that are exposed using projectors rather than cameras. The extreme similarity between the design of the motion picture camera and projector is such that if the projection booth is adequately darkened and unexposed film is run through a projector, light illuminating the theater will enter the projector lens and expose the film. 35mm film projectors used this way will record the objects and space before them, exposing the relationship between two fixed elements in the cinema: the projector and the screen. In Projector Obscura, the lens, which is normally responsible for casting out so many images, is given a chance to take in light and reflect upon its theatrical space, and the screen is given a chance to stand bare. The theaters shown here are the Biograph, the Gene Siskel Film Center, Anthology Film Archives, Gateway, MFA-Boston, Coolidge Corner and Harvard Film Archive.

Matthias Müller & Christoph Girardet / Play

2003, video, 7:20
Audience at the movies. In PLAY, the onscreen action can only be seen reflected in the facial expressions and gestures of the audience. In sequences of analogous reactions, individual behavior condenses into collective behavior. The event is transferred from the stage to the hall; audience members become the actors in an unpredictable drama.

Herz Frank / 10 Minutes Older

1978, 35mm shown on video, 10 minutes
"For me, Ten Minutes Older still remains a model documentary. There, the screen time and the real time are identical. There are no words, and it was taken all in one breath. The face of a kid, who for the first time gets to know the familiar fight between the Good and the Evil, reflects the depths of the human soul. We did not edit anything, we simply started rolling in the right time, and we were patient enough to sit through the drama of the little child... The film lives, and this is the most important thing! One of my friends from documentary filmmakers laughed saying that this is my '[Battleship Potemkin]'. I do not object." - HF

Adele Horne / Quiero Ver

2008, video, 6 minutes
On the 13th of each month, hundreds of people gather at a site in the Mojave Desert to see visions of the Virgin Mary appear in the sun. They point Polaroid, cell phone, and video cameras at the sun, and compare interpretations of the resulting images. This film documents the creative energy of this populist spiritual event.

Standish Lawder / Necrology

1970, 16mm, 11:25
"In NECROLOGY, a 12-minute film, in one continuous shot he films the faces of a 5:00 PM crowd descending via the Pan Am building escalators. In old-fashioned black and white, these faces stare into the empty space, in the 5:00 PM tiredness and mechanical impersonality, like faces from the grave. It's hard to believe that these faces belong to people today. The film is one of the strongest and grimmest comments upon the contemporary society that cinema has produced." -- Jonas Mekas, The Village Voice

Ben Russell / Black and White Trypps #3

2007, 16mm, 12 minutes
The third part in a series of films dealing with naturally-derived psychedelia. Shot during a performance by Rhode Island noise band Lightning Bolt, this film documents the transformation of a rock audience's collective freak-out into a trance ritual of the highest spiritual order.

Tony Conrad / Film Feedback

1974, 16mm, 14:25
Made with a film-feedback team which I directed at Antioch College. Negative image is shot from a small rear-projection screen, the film comes out of the camera continuously (in the dark room) and is immediately processed, dried, and projected on the screen by the team. What are the qualities of film that may be made visible through feedback?

Guest program for the online festival Kinodot

Guest program for the online festival Kinodot

May 1, 2013

Kinodot.com

PROGRAM NOTES

This program of films and animations was collected from friends and collaborators of Balagan - a monthly series of film screenings that has been in operation since 2000. Balagan was begun by two avant-garde filmmakers -- Jeff Silva and Alla Kovgan -- in a small video projection room of a movie theater in Brookline, MA. It has since grown to include two more curators -- Stefan Grabowski and Mariya Nikiforova -- and to be hosted by the historic Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, MA, which accommodates a couple hundred audience members and a variety of analog and digital formats.

As the name of the series may imply, the curators take a somewhat carnivalesque approach to the programming -- mixing live performance, formal experimentation, personal documentary, and traditional narrative -- in order to approach the cinematic experience as it may have been at the historical beginnings of film projection, before the movie industry began to dictate the now-familiar exhibition format. We try to nurture a continuation of that original strain of image-making, which never ceased to question and test the emotional and dialectic powers of the medium.

For this particular program, we have chosen representatives of a big variety of techniques and formats in order to showcase the incredible versatility of experimental media practitioners working today. There are animations made by a sculptor using thousands of xerox copies; a workplace drama assembled from a sea of 1970s' German industrial films; an unusual documentary portrait by a Stockholm-based artist and experimental musician; a strange puppet story; a stop-motion exploration of an abandoned insane asylum; a structuralist flicker poem; a series of wild fantasies drawn on paper; and an abstract film-bridge between identities.

PROGRAM

Brave Old World / Dagmar Kamlah

2000
EDP at work anno 1970 – the tip of the iceberg of the late industrial revolution. Electronic dinosaurs sort mountains of punch cards and define scores for white, grey and blue collar workers. Punchcard operators pushing to be programmers… Only the apprentices seem to be not yet entirely in the ban of monster computers. Historic 16mm footage is taken from an educational TV program for school children. The soundtrack points into the future.

Erik / Mats Lundell

2012
A personal documentary with a friend. Shot on scrapped cameras and edited on DV.

Failure / Jesse Kaminsky

2010
LaserJet print was photocopied then the copy was copied and so on then animated. This work was supported by the Berwick Research Institute.

Impossible Chase / John Warren

2011
A motorcyclist is subjected to an optical reworking—layers collide, blend, and fade away.

Isemond / Xander Marro & Mat Brinkman

2011
Isemond the Tailor makes a bonnet for her friend the goose. A monster takes over the old castle and people start to disappear.

Island Jamboree / Dylan Hayes

2010
All I wanna do all I wanna be
Two boys look for some reports.

Met State / Bryan Papciak

2010
Met State was an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival and has received numerous festival awards for Best Experimental Film. Met State is a visual portrait of an abandoned insane asylum, filmed over two years in different conditions and employing different film and animation techniques.

Place for Landing / Shambhavi Kaul

2010
A landscape all of mirrors where great big shadows pass over the patchwork below. The camera shifts its focus. A child appears, disappears, a duck moves in. The surveying mirror either implodes or explodes into space. Its mottled hallway glass both indicates and becomes a Place for Landing. After a series of clever misdirections by the mirror, all is redeemed by a fragment of song in this unsettling bedtime story.

Playing for Keeeps / Dylan Hayes

2011
Roll the die, see the moon,
Ill dig a hole, catch you soon

Vicious Circle

Vicious Circle

April 23, 2013

Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

Mixing a number of rarely juxtaposed genres, Balagan takes a 360-degree look at cyclical structure and circular form. We are happy to present three locally-based artists and filmmakers: Nicolas Brynolfson, Santiago Gil and Julie Miller; as well as an audiovisual performance by NY-based artist Thomas Dexter and a 1970s' experimental film by Japanese avantgardist Toshio Matsumoto.

PROGRAM

Thomas Dexter / Action/Film

16mm projection performance
Action/Film is an expanded cinema performance that uses direct animation, light-to-sound synthesis, a prepared projection surface, and the destruction of film itself. Starting with blank loops of 16mm film leader, the actions of the projectionist; drawing, scratching, erasing, generate both a formalist visual composition and a real-time graphical score for electronic sound. As the audience becomes aware of the projectionist’s interventions, attention drifts between the audio / visual illusions in the space of the screen and their active mechanical and physical counterparts at the site of projection. In exposing this material process, Action/Film questions the place of filmic display in a media terrain increasingly marked by the virtual, insubstantial, and hidden. Never the same twice, the performance ends when the film loops break.

Julie Miller / o(81)

2012, 1:38, video
o(81) is an experimental short that engages visionary states through subjective perception.

Toshio Matsumoto / Atman

1975, 11:48, 16mm presented on video, courtesy of the Postwar Japan Moving Image Archive
"ĀTMAN is a visual tour-de-force based on the idea of the subject at the centre of the circle created by camera positions (480 such positions). Shooting frame-by-frame the filmmaker set up an increasingly rapid circular motion. ĀTMAN is an early Buddhist deity often connected with destruction; the Japanese aspect is stressed by the devil mask of Hangan, from the Noh, and by using both Noh music and the general principle of acceleration often associated with Noh drama." (We Find Wildness)

Santiago Gil / Chiralia

2013, 26 mins, video
Six people, three generations. A lake in the forest. A boy disappears. This tragic event, transported from person to person, spawns a collective screen onto which individual fears and wishes are projected. The dramatic consequences recede to the background and are superimposed with the subjective experience of the figures – Until the veracity of the events dissolves. Did something really happen to the boy? What remains is a feeling of uncertainty that grows out of the unreliable interplay between reality, perception and memory.

Nicolas Brynolfson / LA River Ride

2011, 18 mins, video
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H.G. Wells
A trip down the Los Angeles river bike path becomes a psychedelic vortex of land, sky and water. - N.B.

An Evening with Sami van Ingen

We are thrilled to present, in person, the Finland-based experimental filmmaker, installation artist, curator, and educator Sami van Ingen!

In his work, Sami distills meaning from fleeting moments of footage -- be it home movies, travelogue scenes, mainstream blockbusters, or archival discoveries -- by physically deconstructing, manipulating and rephotographing the film strip. A passionate proponent of analog film, he is also interested in the ways digital technology can add new qualities to experimental filmmaking. He has recently published a book on the subject, Moving Shadows: Experimental Film Practices in a Landscape of Change (2012). Together with filmmaker Mika Taanila, Sami co-curates the new Helsinki-based screening series, Pakopiste (Vanishing Point).

PROGRAM

Texas Scramble

1996, 21 min, 16mm
"... Texas Scramble ... is a closed system that only reveals itself through watching. The film starts with the first line of the Dhammapada [Buddhist verse]: 'What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday/our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow/our life is the creation of our mind.' To build a structure out of this statement, van Ingen uses the rules of an unlikely source. As he explains, 'Texas Scramble is a golf game played in the Southern US. After the players hit their golf balls, the balls are moved forward to the best position so that each round the players start at par. It's also a great name.' ... Van Ingen still labels Texas Scramble his favourite film, partly because it is a very simple starting point that allows for beautifully complex outcomes. Surprisingly, the film was made for television, and although it flummoxed the station managers and had to be cut down to 21 minutes (more for contractual reasons than content), it has shown three or four times on Finnish television." (Chris Kennedy, LIFT, 2004)

Deep Six

2007, 7 min, 35mm
"Deep Six had three starting points: the extraction and re-editing of a short sequence from a Hollywood B-film (The Rage, 1998 directed by Sidney J. Furie); an attempt to use the color photocopy as a cinematic aesthetic; and to explore the frame line as a dynamic visual element. ... In Deep Six, the touch of my hand visible on the screen and the discrepancies in the images are made by contact printing, by hand, strips of photocopied overhead transparencies onto 35mm film. The strong, shifting frame line and sidewise movement, as well as the strong texture of the photocopied surface, are all attempts to work with the screen surface and the framing of the cinematic image." (SvI)

Fokus

2004, 40 min, 35mm
"Fokus is based on a 16mm home movie shot in India during the early 1960s by the director’s grandmother, Barbara van Ingen. The original 11-minute stretch of film portrays the spectacular Dussera procession arranged annually in the town of Mysore. Barbara van Ingen had at the time moved to India, but was still largely an outsider in her new home country. She had initially come to India in order to help her father, the famous documentary filmmaker Robert J. Flaherty with his latest production (Elephant Boy, Robert J. Flaherty & Zoltan Korda, 1937), and had subsequently settled in the country." (Avanto Festival)

"Fokus is a stirring viewing experience. It is based on an extremely minimal visual form: contrasts, textures and glowing colors. Its visual language consists of highly magnified and slowed images. Surface of the film material, the film grain and other anomalies function as integral parts of the whole. Van Ingen's rigorous structuralist methods have produced beautiful, emotionally touching and many-layered results. Fokus is as close to the art of painting as cinema can possibly strive to be. " (Mika Taanila)

Poster by Nathaniel Wyrick.

DIY Dystopia

DIY Dystopia

March 14, 2013

Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

With the natural world teetering on the brink of multilateral catastrophe, a group of analog filmmakers have taken matters into their own hands. Through direct contact with the medium – lifting and reassembling images on the film strip – adhering waste matter to celluloid – leaving emulsion to languish in the landfill – the artists interpret physical processes that ravage our land. Their grave methods yield results of unexpected poetry, vibrancy and beauty.

Attendees of this show will receive a special, locally-produced, collaborative zine, made available through the Papercut Zine Library.

PROGRAM

WWII (work-in-progress) / Douglas Urbank

2012, 16mm with live sound, 7 minutes
Using found footage of World War II and salvaged architectural supplies, Boston-based filmmaker Douglas Urbank offers a haunting look at one of the darkest times in human history. This exhibition of the film will be accompanied by a live soundtrack performed by experimental musicians Duck That.

Landfill 16 / Jennifer Reeves

2011, 16mm sound, 9 minutes
Exhumed motionpictures from my very own Elkhart, Indiana, landfill constitute the canvas of this obsessively hand-painted film. This is my anti-landfill film, an attempt to transform my 16mm out-takes/trash into a meditation on nature’s losing battle to decompose our discarded relics of abandoned technologies and productions. (JR)

Buffalo Lifts / Christina Battle

2004, 16mm silent, 3 minutes
A yellow and black and green daydream of the buffalo herd as it travels across a stretch of broken emulsion. … This is a rumination on the fragility of these powerful masses in flight. And would it be too much to remark, in the midst of so much loping towards extinction, that this could be a metaphor for chemical-based movies? Is this the last graze of an analog touch, the pictures moved by hand, driven, corralled and penned into a digital corner? Allow one last flourish before these flickering shards will be part of someone else’s nostalgia. Memorial dirge, a travel without destination, a funerary rite. (Mike Hoolboom, 2007)

Oil Wells: Sturgeon Road & 97th Street / Christina Battle

2002, 16mm sound, 3 minutes
Shot in the artist’s home province in Alberta, the mechanical rising and falling of an oil well is subject to a suite of rephotography applications (recoloured, superimposed, speed changes). Views of far and near are juxtaposed. Theme and variations, not with a piano, but an oil derrick on a prairie field, rising and falling. (Mike Hoolboom, 2007)

1987, 16mm silent, 8 minutes
... And suddenly I realize it's in my eyes all the time, that I have a vision of Hell, I have even more necessary kind of a way of getting out of Hell, kind of a springboard in my thinking, closing my eyes and thinking what I'm seeing ... and also purgation, that I can go through the stages of purging the self, of trying to become pure, free of these ghastly visions, and then there is something that's as close to Heaven as I would hope to aspire to, which I call "existence is song." And that all of that was in my eyes all the time, backfiring all these years ... It's lovely that I can have the language, but I also have a visual corollary of it, but that is a story. (SB)

Ah, Liberty! / Ben Rivers

2008, anamorphic 16mm sound, 20 minutes
A family's place in the wilderness - living, working, playing on a farm throughout the seasons; free-range animals and children, junk and nature, all within the most sublime landscape. The work aims at a sense of freedom, the scale of which is reflected in the hand-processed Scope format. There's no particular story; beginning, middle or end, just fragments of lives lived. (LUX)

Breakwater

Breakwater

February 19, 2013

Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

From camera motion inspired by the fluidity of bubbling streams -- to the productive potential of organisms residing within -- to the symbolic significance of a teacup's or a storm's destructive powers -- water has given rise to some incredible cinematic images. With this small-gauge film program of works old and new, the first of 2013, we explore the form's aesthetic and figurative possibilities.

All films on 16mm unless noted.

* Two films did not arrive in time for us to screen them. We showed instead: My Name is Oona (1969) by Gunvor Nelson, Kristallnacht (1979) by Chick Strand, Window Water Baby Moving (1962) by Stan Brakhage, and Remains to be Seen (1989/94) by Phil Solomon.

PROGRAM

Chiquitita and the Soft Escape / Michael Robinson

2003, 10 minutes
"Chiquitita and the Soft Escape began as an effort to prove nostalgia and sentimentalism to be purely mechanical processes but became an argument for the opposite through its assembly. Twin attempts at structuring images of home and loved-ones break down in the face of the romantic. The title refers to the ABBA song, whose reentry into my life sparked much of this questioning." (MR)

Glass / Leighton Pierce*

1998, 7 minutes
"A not-so-still life in the backyard with children, water, fire and a few other basic elements. This is another contemplative painterly piece in Leighton Pierce's on-going "Memories of Water" series. While the ultimate effect is intended to be poetic (and maybe even transformative), it is simultaneously a study in the laws of optics - an exploration of refraction, diffraction, diffusion, reflection and absorption." (Canyon Cinema)

Backcomb / Sarah Pucill

1995, 6 minutes
"In Backcomb, the demonic is unleashed on domestic space. It takes the form of two of femininity's mildest tokens, hair and embroidery, that serve here in the creation of a sexualised surrealist experience. Within the claustrophobic space of a table-lay, a forceful and erectile mass of hair comes alive and slithers across its surface. The hair probes into vessels and punches through the cloth till finally order overturns and all smashes to the ground." (Canyon Cinema)

Produce / Matthew McWilliams

2013, 3 minutes, silent
"This short is a remembrance of personal processes. Comprised of superimpositions and brief flashes of both original material and found footage, this document presents images congealed by recollection. 'Produce' was made during the production of fermented beverages and the development of the machine on which it was partially filmed and reflects the progress of both in overlapping, tinted visions that remain and provoke the viscera." (MM)

Alpsee / Matthias Müller

1994, 15 minutes
"Along with the world's great cineasts - from Meliès to Chris Marker - Müller shares the desire to vanish. The filmmaker remains invisible, his location unfixed. He makes biographical cinema, but uses found material, material by others. Thus, ALPSEE, a film about Müller's childhood in the 1960s, takes you directly to Mars." (Fritz Göttler)

Venice Pier / Gary Beydler*

1976, 16 minutes
"Gary Beydler's last, and possibly least-seen, film is an exhilarating tour down the length of the Venice Pier, shot over the course of an entire year. It's a particularly cinematic walk in many ways. Gary investigates the way a single film stock responds so diversely to different seasons, light, weather, time of day. He also beautifully exploits the power of editing to compose or recompose events. Shot spatially out of order over the course of a year, Gary recomposed the footage in editing to make it proceed consistently forward in space, resulting in an intricate mixing up of chronology, so some cuts could represent a jump of months either forward or ba ckward in time. The result is one of gauzy impressionism brought into vivid and breathtaking clarity." (Mark Toscano)

In Captivity

In this time of extreme industrialization, wilderness is all but forgotten. In cities, the trees are kept in corrals, with clearly posted visiting hours, if not caged up in solitary confinement.

While we had originally intended to put together a program of works celebrating the wild, both around us and within, we quickly realized that captivity was inescapable. Wild and tame – free and enslaved – are fundamentally entwined concepts. The very notion of liberty exists only to contrast the many constraints that humans have built.

Come and be our captive (or captivated?) audience for the Boston premieres of new films by Daniel Sousa and Robert Todd, as well as classics by Malcolm Le Grice and Jonas Mekas (presented in 16mm). We promise not to lock the doors.

PROGRAM

Feral / Dan Sousa

2012, 13 min, video

Construct / Robert Todd

2012, 12 min, 16mm

Berlin Horse / Malcolm Le Grice

1970, 7 min, 16mm

The Brig / Jonas Mekas

1968, 68 min, 16mm

Spectral Evidence

Spectral Evidence

November 6, 2012

Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

The surprising focus on the female body at the heart of the Republican party's social campaign, which has increasingly entered the public consciousness in the past year, should feel familiar to Bostonians, especially around this spooky time of year. The sentiments expressed by ideologues such as Paul Ryan, Rush Limbaugh, Todd Akin, Michele Bachmann bear some resemblance to those evoked during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692-93 and the European witch hunts, which had raged about a century before. At these trials, spectral evidence was an effective form of court testimony, in which the accuser recalled dreams or visions implicating a community member in witchcraft.

The majority of executed 'witches' were female, as women were understood to be more susceptible to the Devil's charms due to their "insatiable" "carnal lust" (as found in Malleus Maleficarum, a Medieval treatise on witchcraft). Compare with Limbaugh's recent comments regarding a Georgetown student advocating for state-funded access to contraception, "What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? ... She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex."

Not to mention Todd Akin's infamous quote about "legitimate rape," illustrating a complete ignorance of biology, a suggestion that rape can be consensual, and a magical view of the female body.

One of the catalysts of a wave of European witch hunts was a 1580 publication called De la Démonomanie des Sorciers, which taught to differentiate witches via visible and invisible markers, outlined pseudo-legal guidelines to witch trial procedures, and advocated for the ultimate punishment for anyone remotely implicated. According to a theory by German sociologists Gunnar Heinsohn and Otto Steiger, Bodin's book aimed to criminalize midwifery and traditional herbal medicine practiced by women, which were rendered suspicious, in order to restrict women's access to contraception and abortion. This was part of a bigger effort on the part of prominent Europeans such as Bodin to repopulate the continent after the bubonic plague, resulting in the practice of gynecology coming to rest in the hands of strictly male doctors.

Consider the almost carnal zeal with which Mitt Romney is preparing to pounce on Planned Parenthood. Or the "Protect Life Act" that Paul Ryan has co-sponsored, which would allow state-funded hospitals to deny abortions to women even on the brink of death. The proposal to save a potential life at the expense of another may seem hypocritical, but the New Right figurehead, Paul Weyrich, has made the conservative stance clear, "I believe that if you have to choose between new life and existing life, you should choose new life. The person who has had an opportunity to live at least has been given that gift by God and should make way for new life on earth."

In a political climate where the female body is examined for its childbearing properties and where feminine autonomy is suspicious, artistic creativity by female artists may be seen as a kind of witchcraft. And so we present you "spectral evidence" against these artists: four films that rival the male gaze of contemporary American cinema by taking a new look at the trappings of the female body.

2012, 20 min, video
Gold is a commodity that thrives in uncertain economic climates, and rising gold prices over the past few years have created a boom industry around precious metal scrap. Watching gold scrap dealers at work, this documentary provides a window into one small corner of a global economic market.

Cosmetic Emergency / Martha Colburn

2005, 8 min, 35mm
Cosmetic Emergency explores the idea of beauty through a collage of live action and lyrical animations. A free-form take on the current trend of cosmetic obsession and the immortal quality of painting, the film searches for "what’s on the inside." Topical news stories (such as the US military offering free cosmetic surgery) and musical film sequences are created with paint-on-glass animation, found footage and documentary techniques. The music was commissioned for the film. Selected musicians, including New Zealand’s Hip-Hop artist, “Coco Solid” and “Half Japanese” founder Jad Fair, wrote and recorded humorously cynical songs about the cosmetic craze. Also included is a rare appearance by the Dutch Ambassador of Cosmetic Surgery, Marijke Helwegen.

Heritage / Cate Giordano

2012, 30:23, video
Made by Cate Giordano. Shot by Patrick Guerrero. With Julianna Schley. It is 1888 and all the buffalo are gone, leaving one of the largest cities in South Dakota empty. Now there are only two residents left. One of them is Beau, a hunter once regaled for his 4000 buffalo pelts and his disgruntled wife, Ruby. In the absence of buffalo to kill, Beau erects an enormous statue of a White Buffalo on his property, while a horrified Ruby begs him to abandon his project. When an out-of-town preacher arrives with his brainwashed followers and destroys Beau's buffalo and steals his wife, Beau embarks on a journey to find the real White Buffalo. Shot 'on location' in the streets of New York City, Heritage is a melodrama about a man, played by a woman, who learns to deal with the reality of change and the freedom of being alone.

80th Anniversary of the Saint Petersburg Documentary Film Studio (Russia)

80th Anniversary of the Saint Petersburg Documentary Film Studio (Russia)

September 4, 2012

Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

Although the official founding year of Russia's oldest documentary house is considered to be 1932, the studio's history goes as far back as 1914. Its building in the historic city center evokes the extent of its history, as the studio is located in the luxurious former residence of a 19th-century senator, a lover of horses who built a flamboyant equine drinking fountain and a riding arena on the premises. Among the many pieces of archival chronicles held by the studio – including home movies by the Romanov family, footage from the 900-day city siege during WWII, and Anna Akhmatova's epic funeral in 1966 – are treasured insights into Russia's and Saint Petersburg's past that are revisited time and time again by the studio's archivists, filmmakers and curators.

Russian documentary production has diminished from the heyday of the '60s, but the studio continues to support a group of filmmakers who regularly present 35mm and digital films at international festivals. Among the most acclaimed members of the collective are three filmmakers we will feature this evening – Pavel Medvedev, a legendary figure who appeared at the 2009 Flaherty Seminar; Sergei Loznitsa, who has recently received international attention for his Cannes entries My Joy and In the Fog, and Alina Rudnitskaya, an investigator of female roles in Russian society, whose most recent film I Will Forget This Day made an impact at a host of international festivals.

All films presented on 35mm with English subtitles.

PROGRAM

On the Third Planet from the Sun / Pavel Medvedev

2006, 35mm, 32 mins
The Russian North. People who live here pick up “space garbage” in the bog, sell the scrap metal or use it in housekeeping and farming. In the Arkhangelsk region, forty-five years since nuclear bomb experiments, life is going its ordinary way.

Bitch Academy / Alina Rudnitskaya

2007, 35mm, 31 mins
There was a time when the word “bitch” was perceived as negative. But today it has become a bestseller. A bitch has become a kind of ideal to a modern woman, a real hero of our day. Most women older than fifteen seek to be a bitch. Who is a vixen, a modern bitch? Vixen is a woman that follows her own desires, she relies only on herself, clearly understands what she wants to get from life and men, doesn’t follow the stereotypes, knows men’s “weak” points, is self-supporting and has inner freedom.The main shooting technique is a method of observation. This film can be called “the best documentary comedy” about women.

Factory / Sergei Loznitsa

2004, 35mm, 30 mins
Masculine and feminine, hard and soft, continued and interrupted, whole and fragmented. All that is encompassed by just one day at the factory.

Ship to Shore: Boston

Ship to Shore: Boston

August 24, 2012

Norman B. Leventhal, Post Office Square, Boston, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

Balagan and Magic Lantern Cinema have collaborated to present a pair of outdoor film events on consecutive nights in Boston and Providence under the banner “Ship to Shore,” evoking the seafaring histories of their respective cities. Each screening will present one feature film and one short film by acclaimed experimental filmmakers Peter Hutton and James Benning – two artists who share a similarly contemplative approach to place-based documentary film practice while still retaining strikingly original styles of filmic analysis and expression.

These screenings mark the second collaboration between members of Balagan and Magic Lantern in the last year, and also extend these film series’ parallel inquiries into site-specific modes of film curation and exhibition, with each screening functioning as an exploration of cinema’s ability to change the ways we experience and inhabit urban spaces. By placing Hutton’s insightful studies of seascapes and waterways in dialogue with Benning’s penetrative analyses of landscape and national politics, “Ship to Shore” seeks not only to explore the lines of communication existing between these two artist’s film practices and contemporary relations between nature and the built environment. It also seeks to strengthen the connections that tie Boston’s experimental film culture to that of Providence.

Reflection/Refraction

Reflection/Refraction

July 3, 2012

Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

A look into any mirror presents an image familiar yet curious - a backwards world and an unblinking face staring back at you. The physical imperfections of its surface reflect distorted truths, often unnoticed but always present. You can never truly see yourself. Even the mind's eye sees a warped self-image, refracted by subjective perception and experience.

This program features films that explore the ideas of reflection and refraction, through content, composition and structure. The final piece will be a unique performance of 16mm manipulation and live sound by Architecture of the Sun. A few of the pieces in this program will also be featured as part of a traveling program, Private Territory, on the theme of personal space, within the home or within the mind.

Acceleration

Acceleration

June 5, 2012

Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

As a large section of the city floods out during the summer months toward worlds of water and other amusements, Balagan maintains momentum with the June 5th program: Acceleration. Come on board the cinematic roller coaster as we rocket toward maximum velocity, with pulsing lights and flowing hallucinogenic landscapes rushing by on all sides.

PROGRAM

Dromosphäre / Thorsten Fleisch

Germany, 2010, video

Impossible Chase / John Warren

USA, 2011, 16mm transferred to video

Bike Light / Nicholas Kovats

Canada, 2012, super8 transferred to video

Monster Movie / Takeshi Murata

USA, 2005, video

Outer Space / Peter Tcherkassky

Austria, 1999, 35mm

Heavy-Light / Adam Beckett

USA, 1973, 16mm

Projection Performance by Bruce McClure

Projection Performance by Bruce McClure

April 10, 2012

Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

HIS SCAFFOLD IS THERE SET UP AS IF TO EDIFY

Bruce McClure, an architect turned filmmaker with an inclination toward rock-stardom, utilizes multiple 16mm projectors and short film loops to create rhythmic strobes and drones, all filtered through an array of guitar effects pedals and turned up to 11. The sound-image relationship slowly evolves as the loops drift to different phases of syncopation. The physicality of the flashing light and penetrative audio results in a visceral, transcendent experience.

Poster by Rachel Deutsch.

Whose Land?

Whose Land?

February 7, 2012

Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

This American Land. Bound by arbitrary lines whose authority is daily reinforced by violence and bureaucracy. Sectioned into states, counties, and municipalities, based on voting patterns and property lines. Continually expanding its scope through bloody conquest, financial persuasion and cultural influence.

What lies in the middle? Empty space, crumbling centenarian constructions and a mysterious, crawling vine that swallows up several feet a day…

Inspired by the Occupy movement, which questioned the "publicness" of spaces we take for granted, Balagan presents four films.

PROGRAM

Triumph of the Wild / Martha Colburn

2008, 10 mins, 35mm
"Triumph of the Wild spans decades of battles in American history and places a man in a landscape infested with indigenous predatory animals." - MC

Future So Bright / Matt McCormick

2010, 23 mins, HDCam
"[T]he film explores ghost towns, abandoned military bases, and boarded up tourist traps to present a meditative time capsule of the false starts and failed attempts of the past 200 years of American Western Expansion." - MM

Kudzu Vine / Josh Gibson

2011, 20 mins, 35mm CinemaScope
Beautiful, eerie portrait of an invasive species from Korea that is taking over the Southern landscape several feet a day.

You Are on Indian Land / Mort Ransen and Mike Mitchell

1969, 34 mins, 16mm
Legendary vérité document of a 1969 protest by members of the Mohawk tribe against a levy imposed on them by the U.S.-Canada border authority.

Breathing a Fatal Stillness: A Visit from Daïchi Saïto

Breathing a Fatal Stillness: A Visit from Daïchi Saïto

January 24, 2012

Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

Japanese filmmaker based in Montreal, Daïchi Saïto studied literature and philosophy in the USA and Hindi and Sanskrit in India before turning to film. His work has screened at numerous venues worldwide, and his film Trees of Syntax, Leaves of Axis won the Best of the Festival Award at the 48th Ann Arbor Film Festival and the Jury Grand Prize at the 16th Media City Film Festival. Co-founder of the Montreal-based artist filmmaking collective Double Negative, Saïto also serves as Co-Director of CinemaSpace at the Segal Centre for Performing Arts.

Homegrown Short Films

Homegrown Short Films

October 18, 2011

Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

This was our big opening & fundraising event and a screening of old and new works from local film- and videomakers. All but two of the filmmakers attended the screening. DJ Jesse Kaminsky opened the evening with an hourlong set.

PROGRAM

Playing for Keeeps / Dylan Hayes

2009, 8 mins, animated video
RISD graduate and teller of mind-boggling stories, Dylan is currently based in Providence.

Chores / Louisa Conrad

2011, 10-minute excerpt, video
Louisa Conrad is an artist and a farmer living in Southern Vermont. She received her MFA from CalArts in Photography and Media. She has spent time researching agricultural economies and fisheries in Los Angeles, the Canadian Arctic, Coastal Oregon and Iceland. Big Picture Farm attempts to combine farming and artistic practices in a sustainable way. She and her husband, the poet Lucas Farrell, currently raise 16 goats and make cheese and goat milk caramels. Her work has been shown most recently at the Currier Museum in NH (a longer version of Chores), Anthony Greaney in Boston, and the Freies Museum in Berlin, Germany.

2011, 3 mins, 16mm
Nicky is a Boston filmmaker of Texan origins who works with direct animation, video, as well as machinima: her documentary FWD: Update on My Life (2010) showed at the 2011 New Directors/New Films.

Making Space / Matt McWilliams

2010, 3 mins, 16mm
A North Shore native and Emerson grad, Matt takes a handmade approach to his work, from hand-processed, double-exposed and optically printed short films to DIY computers to home brewed ciders and ales.

Noisolpmi / Tara and Gordon Nelson

2008, 2 mins, 16mm
Tara and Gordon are Pittsburgh-raised Boston filmmakers. Tara is a recent MFA graduate from MassArt whose thesis film Hull is part of the 2011 Views from the Avant-Garde. Gordon is one of the founders of Jefferson Presents in Pittsburgh.

Star Film / Saul Levine

1971, 10 mins, 16mm
A legendary figure in the avant-garde film scene, Saul makes indelible impressions on young MassArt minds and curates weekly screenings at Film Society.

Eye for an Eye / Ruth Lingford

2002, 6 mins, animated video
Originally from the UK, Ruth is a Harvard fellow who explores psychology, sexuality and society via 2D and 3D animation. This fantastical music video for UNKLE was a collaboration with the London-based collective Shynola.

This Must Be the Place / Luis Arnias

2011, 3 mins, 16mm
SMFA grad and Venezuela native, Luis has a sharp eye for strangeness and beauty, which he captures on super8 and 16mm film.

Pink / Soon-mi Yoo

2010, 4 mins, video
A few minutes spent in the red light district in Seoul, South Korea.

Passage upon the Plume / Fern Silva

2011, 7 mins, 16mm
"Plumes dust the arid land, east to west, shapeshifting as they lift in ascension. Something lowers. An ark ran aground where revolution took root: ropes raise stones in baskets. Hearts heavier and lighter than the feather, permitted passage. Tethered or freed, resting from life or dawning anew." (Charity Coleman) Fern is a MassArt grad currently living in New York.

Night Side / Rebecca Meyers

2008, 5 mins, 16mm
"A side of the universe turned away from the sun." Rebecca is a 2009 Foster Prize winner and the film curator at Emerson's Paramount Center.

Covert Action / Abigail Child

1984, 10 mins, 16mm
Covert Action (1984) disrupts the rhythm of remembrance by subverting the institution of the home movie. It loops footage of two heterosexual couples on holiday: embracing, touching, stroking, playing leapfrog, awkwardly arranging their bodies and posturing for the camera eye. The effect is a kind of choreographed dislocation dance, a man with one woman, then another, two women together. Child subverts the truncated language of conventional narrative cinema by interjecting title cards a la silent cinema as ironic counterpoint and uses a dialogue between two poets, Carla Harryman and Steve Benson, to confound and hypothesis regarding the footage. A sexual politic steeped in deception, a story only half revealed. Abigail Child is a New York-based media artist and SMFA professor.

Undergrowth / Robert Todd

2011, 11 mins, 16mm
Emerson professor and bafflingly prolific filmmaker, Rob has had retrospectives of his work at home and abroad. In this film, he gets close to a few unusual owls.

Hamburger, USA

Cinematic Disobedience is back! This summer, we are focusing on questions of personal health, lifestyle, and ecological impact, which are, at least partially, within the realm of our control.

What better way to begin than to survey the contents of our plates, 1970s-style?

We'll learn about the mysterious origins of all-American foods: peanut butter, hamburgers, and mustard, with the help of Woody Allen and a funky soundtrack, and keep up with latest food industry technologies of 1975.

Food safety and quality are as much a concern today as they were 40 years ago - but at least Food Sticks™ are no longer around.

Doors at 6pm, screening at 7. Suggested donation: $5-10. All films presented on 16mm unless noted. Big thanks to Liz Coffey at the Harvard Film Archive and Paul Shannon at the American Friends Service Committee for assistance with this screening.

Neighbors (1977) + Cost of Living (1978) by Richard Rogers

Neighbors (1977) + Cost of Living (1978) by Richard Rogers

May 9, 2012

549 Columbus, Boston, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

This was the third gathering of Cinematic Disobedience, screening Richard Rogers's wonderful short documentary "Neighbors - Conservation in a Changing Community" in the South End, the very same neighborhood where the film was made 35 years ago.

"Neighbors" was followed by Rogers's 1979 study of people's attitudes toward money, "The Cost of Living."

Big thanks to Documentary Educational Resources for assistance with this screening!

Money Talks: 16mm oddities from Zampano's Playhouse + Chris Faraone

Money Talks: 16mm oddities from Zampano's Playhouse + Chris Faraone

March 30, 2012

Somerville Cable Access Television, Somerville, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

Cinematic Disobedience and Zampano’s Playhouse present the second film program inspired by Occupy —

— an eclectic mix of short vintage films on the American pursuit of the almighty dollar. From grim depression-era cartoons like the Fleischer Bros.’ “Greedy Humpty Dumpty” (1936) to howlingly optimistic 1970s’ training films like “Work - Coping with the 20-Hour Week,” tonight’s movies gain plenty of added resonance on the backdrop of the Occupy Movement. Any One-Percenters in the audience will particularly enjoy tonight’s inspirational noir drama “Crossroads USA” (1952) in which a disaffected young gas station attendant learns to Dream Big when a prosperous oil man passes through his station. (Brought to us by OIL INDUSTRY INFORMATION COMMITTEE.) Nine short films in 90 minutes!

AND —

Chris Faraone, JP-based journalist who camped at many occupations around the country, will open the evening with a presentation of his book, 99 Nights with the 99 Percent.

Mission Hill and the Miracle of Boston

Mission Hill and the Miracle of Boston

March 1, 2012

Spectacle, Jamaica Plain, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

Inspired by the Occupy movement, Cinematic Disobedience aims to bring people together for food and discussion and to present films that reflect in one way or another on the state of our economy, our public space and our society. Events will take place on the first of every month in different locations around Boston.

Mission Hill and the Miracle of Boston (1978) by Richard Broadman

“The story of what happened to Mission Hill is the story of many of America’s older ethnic neighborhoods. Seventy years ago, Mission Hill was an Irish neighborhood of homes and small stores in which people lived near their schools, their church, and their shopping area. But between 1940 and 1980 it changed: thousands of units of public housing were built and decayed there. Nearby hospitals expanded, displacing people from their homes. Developers and speculators bought and sold property and built twenty-story apartment houses. A new, poor population and an affluent professional population arrived to compete for parts of the old neighborhood.

Mission Hill and the Miracle of Boston is the story of urban renewal, racial conflict, and the struggle of a neighborhood to survive these changing times. Spokespeople include real estate developers, community activists, workers, and residents.” -DER

Big thanks to Documentary Educational Resources for assistance with this screening!

PROGRAM

7pm: Potluck
8pm: Screening, followed by a discussion

Loring-Greenough Film (9·09 - 10·12)

Halloween Night

Halloween Night

October 30, 2012

Loring-Greenough House, Jamaica Plain, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

An evening of classic Hollywood, delicious food & drink, costumes, and magic. Bonus - celebrating All Hallows' Eve in the company of ghosts at the 250-year-old historic house! Free!

7pm - Potluck in the dining room
Food, dessert & (white) wine welcome

8pm - Magic show by Joe Ledoux

8:30pm - Screening -

PROGRAM

The Ghosts of Greenough / Stefan Grabowski

2012, 16mm transferred to video, 5 mins
Spooky short film exploring the nooks, crannies, and porcelain doll tea parties of the Loring-Greenough House.

I Married a Witch / René Clair

1942, shown on video, 75 min
"René Clair's greatest American film, with the old Surrealist turning what could have been merely a supernatural comic romp into something truly plangent. Veronica Lake plays the spirit of a witch burnt by Puritans in the 17th century, cursing the descendents of her denouncer to eternal marital malaise (the wonderful period prologues predate Monty Python by decades in their anachronistic lampooning of history). Fast forward to the present where the latest sap, Fredric March, is about to be married to a REAL witch (a fabulously imperious Susan Hayward), on the eve of running for governor as puppet for her media-baron father. Lake decides on some spirited revenge, attempting to destroy March's life by making him fall in love with her; only, through a botched spell, finding herself smitten."

Loring-Greenough House on Film

Loring-Greenough House on Film

September 28, 2010

Loring-Greenough House, Jamaica Plain, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

This was the last (until October 2012) of the local film screenings at the LGH, so we decided to film the place itself. The program included 16mm and super8 works shot at the house as part of a collective exercise. The participating filmmakers were Stefan Grabowski, Matt McWilliams, Gordon Nelson, Mariya Nikiforova, Nicole Prowell, and Robert Todd.

Last Show

Last Show

May 18, 2010

Loring-Greenough House, Jamaica Plain, MA

PROGRAM

Grounplay / Rob Todd

2009, 12 mins, 16mm
"In Groundplay, Robert Todd uses his 16mm camera as a microscope, nosing about in a world on a different scale. The sensitive instrument does not perceive objects, but dives into the empty spaces between them. The focus shifts to a new world filled with structures, grit and dust barely perceptible to the naked eye." - IFF Rotterdam

Ioka / Kyle Glowacky

2010, 20 mins, 16mm
"IOKA is a portrait of Exeter, New Hampshire's historic 1915 movie house. It recently closed down in 2008 due to the strict state fire codes and the need for upgrades, economic recession and lack of patronage." - KG

Plastic / Ethan Feldbau

2008, 18 mins, 16mm
"The poetic fable of a neglected special education student, who spends his adolescence reshaping himself to be more like the bullies of his youth." - EF

Ward's Pond / Mariya Nikiforova

2009, 10 mins, 16mm
"In the spirit of Robert Smithson and James Benning, 'Ward's Pond' is a film-poem dedicated to a location in Jamaica Plain, MA. A glacial kettle hole that belonged to the Ward family farm in the 1600s, the pond and its surroundings were transformed into a park by Frederick Law Olmsted at the turn of the twentieth century. Today, overshadowed by a high-rise apartment building, Ward's Pond continues its quiet existence. The film captures several moments over the course of nearly a year in its life." - MN

Johnny Kilraper and the Arbiter of Silence / Stefan Grabowski

2009, 20 mins, 16mm presented on video
"Existentially lost, alcoholic ex-detective, Johnny Kilraper, must overcome his own self-loathing in order to stop international crime lord Klaus 'the Grouse' Richter from receiving a mystical jewel known as 'the Arbiter of Silence.'" - SG

1985, 7 min
"A non-narrative and abstract visual poem in five parts. Its title refers to the underworld river of forgetfulness. The drawings are created from non-traditional animation media including rubbed and erased graphite, pigment, and aluminum powders to make an animate surface of unusual richness." - AK

Little Deaths / Ruth Lingford

2010, 12 mins
A work that uses documentary techniques to attempt to describe an orgasm.

The Windmill / Dan Sousa

2007, 1:21

Drift / Dan Sousa

2009, 1:49

The Minotaur / Dan Sousa

1999, 8 mins
"A loose interpretation of the Minoan myth, as seen through the monster's point of view." - DS

Porch Film: 76 Day St. Apt. #2
16mm, color, sound, 18 min, 2004
"Edited in 2003 from footage shot in the summer and fall 2001, Porch Film: 76 Day St. Apt #2 is part of a series of autobiographical films that examine the role of mediated experience and the influence and integration of the public and private spheres in the construction of an individual’s identity and memory. This domestic portrait of a summer and early fall on a back porch is emotionally tempered by a medley of music creating a kind of narrative arc over the transitions of a romantic relationship and the passing seasons." -PT

FILM (Parkour) by Christopher May

FILM (Parkour) by Christopher May

February 16, 2010

Loring-Greenough House, Jamaica Plain, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

"Christopher May's 16mm and Super-8 film work currently explores sensually visceral qualities of cinema and their topographical relationships with sub-cultural landscapes. His films have screened at Yale University, the Austrian Film Museum, and MALBA - Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires." -CM

Christopher is the founder of The International Experimental Cinema Exposition.

Kathryn Ramey and Jonathan Schwartz

Kathryn Ramey and Jonathan Schwartz

January 19, 2010

Loring-Greenough House, Jamaica Plain, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

Kathryn Ramey's films are inspired by the avant-garde filmmaking tradition, ethnographic research, celluloid manipulation and personal inquiry, resulting in a unique and acclaimed body of work. Kathryn teaches film, animation and film history at Emerson College in Boston.

Jonathan Schwartz is a filmmaker and sound designer who currently teaches film studies at Keene State College in Keene, NH. His travelogue film Nothing Is Over Nothing has screened at numerous festivals, including Views from the Avant-Garde (NY), TIE, ICE (Iowa City), EXiS (Seoul)...

PROGRAM

Nothing Is Over Nothing / Jonathan Schwartz

16mm, 17mins

The Passenger / Kathryn Ramey

16mm, 17mins

Yanqui WALKER and the OPTICAL REVOLUTION / Kathryn Ramey

16mm, 33 mins

Architecture of the Sun

Architecture of the Sun

December 15, 2009

Loring-Greenough House, Jamaica Plain, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

Architecture of the Sun is a live projection duo composed of Brittany Gravely and Jenn Pipp, who met while studying at SMFA and currently live in Boston. They were joined by long-time musical collaborators, the Glass Shivers.

The evening opened with a collective projecting of a 16mm loop by Julianna Schley and Matt McWilliams.

Robert Todd and Joe Roberman

Stockholm

Last stop of the tour, in collaboration with Ryan Tebo, Sally Müller, and Mats Lundell. See description under "Reykjavik" below.

PROGRAM

Sanjiban / Ben Pender-Cudlip

(8 mins, 2012, HD video) USA

Place for Landing / Shambhavi Kaul

(6 mins, 2010, 16mm transferred to HD video) USA

The Spirit of Garfield / Tamara Henderson

(3 mins, 2012, 16mm color) Sweden

Whole Note / Saul Levine

(12 mins, 2000, super8 transferred to 16mm b&w) USA

Persian Pickles / Jodie Mack

(3 mins, 2012, 16mm color) USA

On Pause / Mikhail Zheleznikov

(6 min, 2012, video) Russia

New York Underground / Masha Godovannaya

(7 mins, 1999, super8 on video) Russia

A shout - to touch - the silence / Anna Nykyri

(3 mins, 2009, archival 16mm on video) Finland

Ancestors / Douglas Urbank

(5 mins, 2012, 16mm color) USA

Gathering / Robert Todd

(4:30, 2009, 16mm color) USA

Rondo / Marja Mikkonen

(8:20, 2006, 8mm on video) Finland

Längst inne i elden måste du värja ditt liv / Åsa Hoflin

(6 min, 2012, video) Sweden

Helsinki

Helsinki

August 16, 2012

Harakka Island, Helsinki, Finland

PROGRAM NOTES

Third stop of the tour, in collaboration with Kari Yli-Annala and with assistance from Sami van Ingen. The evening also included an electronics workshop and the finissage of the datadada mail-in art exhibition. See tour description under "Reykjavik" below.

Saint Petersburg

Second stop of the tour, with assistance from Masha Godovannaya and Alexandr Mashanov (Erarta). See tour description under "Reykjavik" below.

PROGRAM

Place for Landing / Shambhavi Kaul

6 mins, 2010, 16mm transferred to HD video

Footnotes to a House of Love / Laida Lertxundi

13 mins, 2007, 16mm

Persian Pickles / Jodie Mack

3 mins, 2012, 16mm

Whole Note / Saul Levine

12 mins, 2000, super8 transferred to 16mm

Ancestors / Douglas Urbank

5 mins, 2012, 16mm

Gathering / Robert Todd

4:30, 2009, 16mm

Memory Worked by Mirrors / Stephen Broomer

2:24, 2011, 16mm

A shout - to touch - the silence / Anna Nykyri

3 mins, 2009, 16mm transferred to video

Rondo / Marja Mikkonen

8:20, 2006, 8mm transferred to video

New York Underground / Masha Godovannaya

7 mins, 1999, 8mm transferred to video

Reykjavík

Reykjavík

July 19, 2012

Bíó Paradís, Reykjavík, Iceland

PROGRAM NOTES

Private Territory was a program of films on 16mm and video that originated in Boston and traveled to several Northern European cities between July 18th and August 19th, 2012. Inspired by the curator's voyage from her current home in Boston to her native home in Saint Petersburg, the program was collected around the ideas of home, interiority and self-reflection. Along the way, the effort of cultural exchange was taken further through collaboration on joint programs with local filmmakers and curators - Masha Godovannaya and Mikhail Zheleznikov (St. Petersburg); Kari Yli-Annala (Helsinki); Ryan Tebo, Sally Müller, Mats Lundell, Tamara Henderson, and Åsa Hoflin (Stockholm).

16mm, 3 mins, 2010
Celestial "photogram composed entirely of iron filings in a magnetic field". Eric is based in Oakland.

I Swim Now / Sarah Biagini

16mm, 9 mins, 2010
Intense journey into the mind of Violet Jessop, survivor of three ship wrecks. Sarah teaches at University of Colorado Boulder.

Crazy Rock / Becky James

16mm, 4 mins, 2009
Ambiguously compelling "exploration of routine," featuring a strange pair: a ghost and a rock. Becky is a Harvard grad who currently lives in New York.

Special Offer Inside / Jodie Mack

16mm, 4 mins, 2010
Hypnotic meditation on the essence of envelopes. Jodie teaches at Dartmouth College. Her work was recently screened at the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar.

The Story of Thomas Edison / Aaron Zeghers

16mm, 5 mins, 2011
Vibrant exploration of the downfall of childhood heroes. Aaron is a member of the Winnipeg Film Group.

Word Picture Verses / C. David Goodrich

16mm, 4 mins, 2005
Animated poem about life cycles and loss. David is a RISD graduate currently living in Cambridge.

Trees of Syntax, Leaves of Axis / Daïchi Saïto

35mm, 10 mins, 2009
Luminous sequence of color and light transformations. Daichi is a member of the Montreal-based Double Negative collective.

Distilled Motion II

Distilled Motion II

July 25, 2011

Wildlife Preserve, Lyndell's Bakery, Cambridge, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

This is the second part of a program first shown at Spectacle in JP on June 23rd. All films were shown on 16mm and super8.

PROGRAM

Kakania / Karen Aqua

Boston, 1986, 16mm

Up / Julianna Schley

New York, 2010, super8

In Between / Mike Stoltz

Providence, 2006, 16mm

Hadley Grass / Zach Iannazzi

San Francisco, 2009, 16mm

The Story of Thomas Edison / Aaron Zeghers

Winnipeg, 2011, 16mm

Microdots / Gordon Nelson

Boston, 1993/2010, super8

The Light / Jak Ritger

Boston, 2011, super8

Pulp / Flip Johnson

Boston, 1990, 16mm

Fe / Eric Stewart

Oakland, 2010, 16mm

Sexy Noir / Ben Popp

Portland OR, 2009, 16mm

Unsubscribe #1: Special Offer Inside / Jodie Mack

Dartmouth NH, 2010, 16mm

Walkies: Dog Walks in Springtime / Tara Nelson

Boston, 2011, super8

Capsicum / Deborah Phillips

Berlin, 2008, 16mm

Distilled Motion I

Distilled Motion I

June 23, 2011

Spectacle, Jamaica Plain, MA

PROGRAM NOTES

Allow your eyes to be hypnotized and your mind to be fooled into seeing things that never were. Thousands of individually rendered frames express movement not captured but merely implied. Some works possess a quiet grace; some produce a wonderful malaise through erratic colors, textures and sounds. All willfully exploit the entrancing flicker of analog film projection.

All films were shown on 16mm.

PROGRAM

Perpetual Motion / Karen Aqua

Boston, 1992, 5 mins
A shrine to ritualized time.

Zeil-Film / Urs Breitenstein

Frankfurt, 1980, 6 mins
The camera rotates on the main shopping street, Zeil, in a structural pattern of acceleration.

Dig / Robert Todd

Boston, 2007, 2.5 mins
A constricted frame in agitation ... the sweet music of jackhammers raging throughout - with Intermission.

I Swim Now / Sarah Biagini

Boulder, 2010, 8.5 mins
An exploration of the experiences of one Violet Jessop, who happened to be aboard all three sister-ships of the White Star Line -- the Olympic, the Titanic, and the Britannic -- while each suffered varying degrees of collision and wreckage at sea.

I Hate You Don't Touch Me or Bat and Hat / Becky James

New York, 2008, 5 mins
A lyrical and monstrous meditation on when the mundane becomes gruesome.

Pillager / Joshua Lewis

New York, 2011, 4 mins
A document of aggressive and proximate manipulations of competing photographic reactions.

Jacques Cousteau Centenary Celebration

From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free. (Jacques Cousteau)

In June of 2010 our favorite underwater explorer would have turned a hundred years old. On November 5th, a bit belatedly, we had a Jacques Cousteau birthday bash at Jamaica Plain's co-working space and venue, Ad Hoc. We projected three 16mm prints from the TV series called The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau.

PROGRAM

Octopus, Octopus (1971)
Sharks (1968)
The Savage World of the Coral Jungle (1968)

With a musical intermission by the Grand Mandibles and 16mm scratch-film interludes by Mariya Nikiforova and Stefan Grabowski.